Try asking the boss for a raise this year. Seems a lot to ask for since you just asked for a raise last year but start with this number — about 500% more than the Tucson inflation rate for last year. Be sure to let the boss know that this is not some number you just pulled out of thin air; you’re only asking for about the same percentage raise that Tucson Electric Power (TEP) now wants in its latest rate filing with the Arizona Corporation Commission.

Let me know how that goes. 

Still, I have to give TEP some credit here — that is one ballsy move — asking for a 14% raise from each and every residential customer in its service area at a time of never ending summer heat and choking air. You say TEP doesn’t really care at all about you, that they’re some kind of inherently evil corporation? No, they are just a run of the mill for profit corporation doing what they are supposed to do: maximize shareholder revenue. And they’re doing a bang up job of it! The CEO of TEP’s parent company Fortis only earned a salary of $1,700,000 in 2024, but thanks to his bonuses he ended up earning about $16,000,000. Yes, that’s probably an unconscionable amount of money, but we have to give the CEO some props for giving credit where credit was due for all that bonus money. In a recent shareholder letter he singled out TEP’s Tucson base for its bottom line contributions to Fortis’ record profits.

Hey Tucson, we couldn’t have done it without you.

If TEP can squeeze more profit out of its residential customers, it will. It makes no economic sense not to do so. Really, no hard feelings, it’s just business. But what a good business it has turned out to be! The more TEP spends on ACC approved expenditures the more profit TEP makes — as of now, 9.55% of those expenditures, and soon to be 10.55% per TEP rate filing for next year. The more gas, oil and coal TEP burns to make your electricity — and the more water it uses up to cool those processes — costs you more. What a business model! It’s akin to the cigarette/nicotine model: TEP creates an ever escalating need and then charges you for the ever escalating prices — not only an endless loop of rising costs for all TEP customers but also for anyone anywhere near TEP’s climate busting exhaust — per Security Exchange Commission filings in 2024, 86% of TEP’s delivered electricity came from burning fossil fuels. 

It’s a lockdown monopoly utility business model. No way out. Just pay through the nose or else.

So kudos to Mayor Romero and Council for standing up to TEP and filing as an intervenor with the Arizona Corporation Commission on TEP’s 14% increase rate filing. It’s like that old cartoon character Popeye used to say before he righted all the wrongs by downing that can of spinach and clobbering his enemies: “That’s all I can stands, I can’t stands no more.” With the current ACC members routinely drawing down on the world’s rubber supply by giving their stamp of approval on just about every TEP rate hike and expenditure request, the city of Tucson deserves our thanks and support for standing tall in that headwind and saying enough is enough. 

Please pass the spinach.

Rick Rappaport is a volunteer with the Arizonans For Community Choice Energy, the Citizens Climate Lobby, and the Greater Tucson Climate Coalition.